“Until next time, the balcony is closed …”
That was how each week of Siskel and Ebert’s movie review show ended. Regardless of whether it was in its incarnation as “Sneak Previews” or “Siskel & Ebert” or “Siskel & Ebert & the Movies,” that’s how it was.
Roger Ebert passed away April 4 at the age of 70 after a long battle with cancer. He was the first movie critic to win a Pulitzer Prize, and his long-running show with Gene Siskel made them famous for giving ‘thumbs up’ or ‘thumbs down’ on a film.
The thing is that Ebert was always about more than simply giving thumbs up or thumbs down. He truly loved cinema. It didn’t matter if it was a prestige film, a huge popular blockbuster or a low-budget creature that crept into the cineplex, he called him them as he saw him. However, whether you agreed or disagreed with him wasn’t the point.
I’ve always felt that with the best film critics (or writers or analysts or whatever you want to call them), it wasn’t about simply whether they liked the movie or not. It was why they did or didn’t. Even when you disagreed with them (and as a horror movie fan, I disagreed a lot), you left with a bit of perspective.
In today’s era of instant and social media, it might seem odd, but critics and reviewers were huge in helping readers discover films they might have otherwise overlooked. In my case, back in the day, the film was Terrence Malick’s 1978 film “Days of Heaven,” a critically acclaimed film that would not have ordinarily been on my radar growing up. However, the praise (and more importantly, the discussion) of the film by people like Ebert, caused me to seek it out. As a result, I discovered a film of incredible beauty and subtlety that I would not have seen otherwise at the time.
That’s only one example.
One of Ebert’s gifts was that he could write about a film from the standpoint of an academic, and of a casual viewer (sometimes within the same review) – not an easy task if you think about it.
He also occasionally touched on issues of social importance of the days. Once again, whether you agreed or disagreed, that wasn’t necessarily the point. It was the discussion that counted, and in Ebert’s case, it was from the heart.
His love of film was varied. Just take a look at the DVD commentaries he provided. Sure, there are two bona fide classics in “Casablanca” and “Citizen Kane,” but there was also the documentary “Crumb” and Alex Proyas’ wonderful, but sadly little-seen science fiction film “Dark City.” The latter two might not have been on the ‘prestige’ level of the first two, but that wasn’t the point. They were strong films that Ebert loved, regardless of genre (in the case of “Dark City,” I definitely agree – it’s on the level of “2001” and “Blade Runner” among the great science fiction films).
Upon Ebert’s passing, director Steven Spielberg said it was the end of an era and that “now the balcony is closed forever.”
With respect to Spielberg, I disagree. Roger Ebert would never want the balcony to be closed. He’d want it open for all of us to love movies as long as they are shown.